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When Do Sneakers Become Art?

At Phillips Auction House, million-dollar art pieces have been replaced by a much more approachable product: sneakers.

When I visited Phillips Auction House in August, it didn’t look terribly unlike sneaker emporium Kith, some three miles downtown. People have dropped tens of millions of dollar inside Phillips, on Jean Michel Basquiat paintings or Paul Newman’s watch. But last month, on top of pedestals made out of cardboard boxes, were 20 different sneakers. There were Nike Air Force 1s, Converse Chuck Taylors, Air Max 95s, and Air Jordan IVs scattered around the gleaming insides of the auction house. There were Pumas painted on by artist Kehinde Wiley, who created the official White House portrait of Barack Obama, and doodled-on Chucks by British artist Shantell Martin. This was all because Phillips was set up not for a full auction but an exhibit with one lot for sale. In the back, a pair of Air Force 1 lookalikes created by the Shoe Surgeon sat in a glass case—they were the only shoes that went up for auction, with a starting price of $5,000.

The exhibit, organized by Elizabeth Semmelhack, the senior curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, is titled tongue + chic, and is designed to bring a different sort of person into the auction house. It seemed to be working: the night I was there must have set the record for the most Supreme items in Phillips at once. But the exhibition also puts sneakers in a place they are growing increasingly common: a gallery setting.

If you’ve spent an hour on a sneaker blog in the last few years, the premise makes sense: the line between sneakers and art is growing increasingly thin. “Considering how many artists whose works might go through the Phillips auction house are now collaborating with sneakers, it seemed like a good fit for Phillips,” says Semmelhack, pointing to Nike’s collaboration with Tom Sachs, and the street artist Kaws’ take on the Jordan IV. It’s easy to find straightforward examples of sneakers that are clearly art, too, clearly worthy of exhibiting in a gallery or auction house. These types of sneakers make up a majority of tongue + chic: a Puma cleat painted on by a famous painter like Wiley is obviously art. When Dave White, “UK’s Andy Warhol,” reworks a pair of Air Max 95s, it’s easy to understand the rationale for putting them in a museum or gallery.

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But the exhibit raises a more interesting question, too: can a shoe untouched by an artist ever be called art? Take, for example, one non-fine-arts shoe that made the cut, the Kith x LeBron James 16 Long Live the King Part II. It’s a regal-looking white shoe covered in gold filigree and red roses. The rationale for putting this shoe—one that isn’t redone by an artist, and that doesn’t necessarily carry massive cultural heft—in the exhibit is murkier. The first reason Semmelhack gives is one that fuels most great art: “They are very beautiful to look at,” she says. “[Ronnie Fieg] is obviously using a historical visual language to talk about the king and at the same time, they're so ornate and in ways that do speak to that regal vocabulary.”

The second reason gets at the way the lines between what we count as sneakers or fashion or high-design or art are blurring. “How can you say that Ronnie's not an artist?” Semmelhack asks rhetorically. The argument is less about Fieg on his own than for sneaker designers as a whole. Semmelhack brings up legendary Nike designer Tinker Hatfield and how he embeds stories and narratives into the Jordan shoes he designs. Isn’t that what artists do?

The night I visited tongue + chic, Phillips was hosting a screening of a new documentary by Bobbito Garcia, the man who literally wrote the book on early sneaker culture. The documentary aired upstairs, above the exhibition of shoes, where art hung on the walls and a cart from cookie dough purveyor 2 Dough Boyz slung flavors called The World Is S’Mores and Confetti to Die. After a long line of Supreme-clad fans paid their respects to Garcia, I asked him if he was surprised to see sneakers here, in Phillips. He said that when the auction house first contacted him, he wasn’t familiar with it at all. “The sneaker community doesn't necessarily need brands, corporations, cultural institutions to validate how we approach footwear in terms of style and culture,” he says.

Garcia says that, for him, shoes have always been art. “In the 70s, you would just go [to the store] and stare—[sneakers] were iconic in our minds,” he says. “We exalted them, we revered them, and eventually the rest of the world caught up. I'm not surprised by that.” That sort of attention is what makes a shoe worthy of going in a museum, gallery, or auction house.

Most of the shoes in the exhibit are instantly recognizable models: the Chuck Taylor, Air Force 1, Air Max 95, Jordan IV, and Reebok InstaPump Fury. It’s not a coincidence that these are the shoes artists gravitated towards—these are iconic shapes that make an interesting base for artwork. “Sneakers are not blank canvases,” Semmelhack’s introduction to the exhibit starts. “The storied histories embedded in classic silhouettes, the cultural significance of specific brands and the increasing importance of sneakers in the creation of personal identity intersect with gender, race, [and] socioeconomic position.” These sneakers are important because consumers like Garcia made them so—by coveting them, by wearing them, and by creating a platform for artists to embellish. Best of all: you can probably find the exact same sneakers—art!—at your local Foot Locker right now.